Toronto Centre (provincial) By-Election

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Final Results

Lib - 12327 - 47.0%
NDP - 8685 - 33.1%
PC - 4030 - 15.4%
Grn - 806 - 3.1%
IND - 101 - 0.4% (Candidate Rama Raj)
Lbt - 99 - 0.4% (Libertarian Party)
Fpo - 89 - 0.3% (Freeom Party of Ontario)
IND - 67 - 0.3% (John Turmel)

What is important here is the swing. The Liberals lost less than 1% of the vote, comparing it to the general election three years ago. What we do see is that a quarter of PC voters, and most Greens were willing to switch to a party they thought could win (The NDP) to try to force the Liberals out. I will take the Green number with a grain of salt - that party does not perform well in by-elections at all times - but the PC number may be of some real significance. What if a quarter of voters from either the Tories or NDP is willing to switch to the other to push the Liberals out of office? I ran the numbers and came up with this:

Lib - 61
PC - 31
NDP - 14

All in all, a great night for the Ontario Liberals.

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Old Post
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I will be following the results of the by-election online, and you can too from here:

http://www.elections.on.ca/en-ca

I will be "live blogging" by editing info into this post as the night goes on.

9:14pm
The NDP is in the lead, but it is only 1% of the polls in.

9:15pm
NDP - 36
Lib - 15
PC - 4
Grn - 2
Oth - 1
Total votes, not percentages. It is very early.

9:22pm
Lib - 893
NDP - 726
PC - 308
Grn - 56
Oth - 19
Libs in the lead. NDP second. 15% of polls in. The race is taking shape, it is too late at this point for anyone but the Liberals or NDP to win, and while the Liberals have a lead, it is not clear just yet.


9:30pm
Lib - 3176 - 46.6%
NDP - 2322 - 34.1%
PC - 1031 - 15.1%
Grn - 198 - 2.9%
1/3rd of polls in
The Liberals have pulled out a wider lead, will it last?

9:38pm
The lead is pretty clear at this point
Lib - 45.8%
NDP - 32.1%
With 50%+ of the polls in, I'm going to call it a win here. Glen Murray is the new MPP for Toronto Centre.


Sorry, no extra data today!